He had been duped by unscrupulous advisors into believing that the deadly mercury he was about to drink was the elixir of eternal life.

Jiajing wasn't the first or last to pursue everlasting youthfulness. It has been the stuff of legend and fantasy since we first began dreaming. Fantasy, legend, dreams—the realms of the supernatural but never the scientific. Until now.

Aubrey de Grey is a Cambridge gerontologist and co-founder or the California-based Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Research Foundation. Gerontology is the study of aging, and de Grey is currently making waves in the field. 

De Grey is at the epicentre of a growing cohort of researchers who believe we are on the cusp of a biological revolution which will give rise to therapies that will enable many of us already born to achieve something like Jiajing's dream. In other words, he believes that the first person who will live to be 1,000 is already alive today.